Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 22, 2020

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Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays

During Christmas and Hannaka family caregivers, especially in the dysfunctional family can be drinking or numbing themselves from the pain of caregiving. They will ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly or abusing prescription drugs. Depression and anxiety ( rife among caregivers) are predictors of increased alcohol use. Social isolation, which is experienced by some caregivers, is also predictive of increased alcohol use.

 

How do you as a geriatric care manager change the script for these aging dysfunctional families – family caregivers and older members who are supposed to care for but can’t. How does a professional GCM make the characters transform? 

 

It’s actually simple –but loaded with skill- give them hope. You need to and use yourself to give them hope that things will change. It’s the best tool in a geriatric care manager toolbox- especially on and after the dreaded holidays.

 Use of Self

The use of Self is perhaps the most powerful tool for geriatric care managers. The use of Self provides families with guarded optimism. GCM’s have to offer a vision of the future that is based not only on a desire for hopeful outcomes. This has come from our own clinical knowledge and belief that change to their nasty crippled, family

system is indeed possible.

By being direct, empathetic, and

nonjudgmental, we become a holding bay for

stressed caregivers, creating a place of safety, c

onfidentiality, consistency, and support.

Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of

perseverance. By giving up on the possibility of

positive change and by exploring all options,

the GCM enables families to feel that, regardless of the outcome, they have done all that they can to support the older adult.

Be like Judy Garland  on the holiday offering hope


Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light


From now on
our troubles will be out of sight

Give the” Merry Christmas – next year

 

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5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

  Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday  

 Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
  • Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family
  • Master Vital Clinical Tools, you need to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

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Filed Under: Aging Alcohol Abuse, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Loneliness, Long distance caregiver, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, alcohol on the holidays, Alcolhol abuse in the elderly, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, My Dysfunctional Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Use of Self

Long Distance Care Providers Really in Upper 10%- New York Times Today

December 24, 2015

Thanksgiving-Travel-2_20151119-171457_1.jpg

Excellent article in the New York Times today about long distance care providers  showing top 10% ( who can afford care manager’s )  do live long distance. But lower 90% of the economy live very close – average of 18 miles from Mom  just to get the  elder and child care they can afford – from family.  

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging life and geriatric care management, elder patient advocate, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, long distance care provider, upper class elder

Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 25, 2014

images_20141216-184443_1.jpg

 

Merry Christmas Many family caregivers are drinking today . They will ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly watching” My Dysfunctional Family” on CMT  thinking compared to them I am so damn normal.

How do you as a geriatric care manager change the script for these aging dysfunctional families – family caregivers and older members who are supposed to care for but can’t. How does a professional GCM make the characters transform? 

 

It’s actually simple –but loaded with skill- give them hope. You need to enter that living room with the TV blaring , bottle tipping and use yourself to give them hope that things will change. It’s the best tool a geriatric care manager toolbox- especially on and after the dreaded holidays.

 

 

Use of self: Perhaps the most powerful tool for the geriatric care manager. Is use of self. . It provides to families with guarded optimism. GCM’s have to offer a vision of the future that is based not only on a desire for hopeful outcomes. This has come  from our own clinical knowledge and belief that change to  their nasty crippled, family system  is indeed possible.

By being direct, empathetic, and nonjudgmental, we become a holding bay for stressed caregivers, creating a place of safety, confidentiality, consistency, and support. Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of perseverance. By not giving up on the possibility of positive change and by exploring all options, the GCM enables families to feel that, regardless of the outcome, they have done all that they can to support the older adult.

You are like  Judy Garland  on the holiday offering hope


Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on
our troubles will be out of sight

Give the” Merry Christmas – next year

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, My Dysfunctional Family

Herding Holiday Cats- Assessing a Dysfunctional Family Case

December 16, 2014

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Dysfunctional aging families do not all like tasteless, ridiculous awful dysfunctional family holiday songs like Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer But Judy Garland’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas  captures the heart of the joyless Christmas these families suffer through.

 

 How can a geriatric care manager begin to  herd and transform these families- give them the gift of positive hope that things can change

There are at least four interrelated tools of successful GCM intervention. Here is the first.

:

  1.  Assessment: A comprehensive and careful assessment is the magic wand of any effective care management. The traditional components of the GCM assessment, which includes an evaluation of the cognitive, physical, and emotional status of the older adult client, are the first wave of that wand.

Plus, you can only transform of Scrooges and his family, by evaluating the health or dysfunction of the overall family system filled with Marley’s ghost and poor Bob Cratchit and his crippled son Tim.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: dysfunctional aging family, geriatric care manager, Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, holidays with aging parents

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